Legal News

Scalia Joins Texas Lawyer Hunting Party

By Dan Slater

Apologies, Law Blog Readers. We’re not sure how we missed this. But we’d never heard of the Tex Parte Blog till today. (Gavel bang: BLT)

We knew that Justice Scalia has been a guest of Texas Tech University, where he was scheduled to give presentations on Friday and this morning as part of the Sandra Day O’Connor Distinguished Lecture Series. What we didn’t know is that, according to plaintiffs lawyer extraordinaire Mark Lanier — founder of the Lanier Law Firm in Houston, Texas Tech Law School alum and underwriter of the lecture series — Scalia had plans to join a hunting party of Texas lawyers over the weekend.

From a Friday post on Tex Parte:

. . . Scalia will join a group of lawyers for a hunt on a ranch that David Segrest, a partner in Gardere Wynne Sewell, owns near Junction. Lanier says he expects Michael Holley, an attorney at The Lanier Law Firm, and Roger Key, a partner in Lubbock’s Key & Terrell, to join the hunting party. “He’s a big hunter,” Lanier says of Scalia. “He’s using this weekend to see if everything is bigger in Texas.”

Notes BLT:

The juxtaposition is fairly hard to imagine: Scalia, no friend of unbridled tort litigation (though not always an enemy), chowing down and stalking deer along with Lanier, the colorful trial lawyer who won the first Vioxx verdict and is known for quoting the Bible and slamming corporate America in front of juries.

Lanier also is the author of a friend-of-the-court brief in the pending case Wyeth v. Levine, labeled by some as the business case of the century. Lanier’s brief sides with consumers who don’t want state tort actions against pharmaceutical companies pre-empted by federal law.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on November 17, 2008 (boomark / email).